Static
by AmeliaGallifrey
Summary: Minerva is rescued from despair by a familiar voice. Oneshot. MM/KS.


Disclaimer: All recognisable characters are the property of JK Rowling.

**Static**

It's like filth, clinging to her clothes and hair and face.

Her skin crawls as his attention moves over her like little stinging insects, his gaze lingering palpably on her turned back. Black and hollow as his eyes, she can hear his thoughts of her as if they were words, following her around the staff room and the Great Hall and creeping into her brain like vapor. He looks at her far too much; more than he used to, _before_, and she can hardly fathom why, unless it is spiteful enjoyment of her sadness. She wards the door to her private chambers, throws up any and every defense that occurs to her; anything to keep that black shadow out, to block the thought of him from her mind. It only barely works.

It's been months, now, since she last laid eyes on what remains of the Order; it is easier, somehow, to hide among the stone and dusty air of the castle, to sharpen her focus to a point and teach, or try to, at least. Nymphadora and Remus continue to send their messages in the usual way, and every now and then a cryptic, scribbled note will arrive from Arthur Weasley, and each scrap of parchment always bears the same, small words.

_No sign, still searching.__  
__Try not to worry._

He's a kind man, Arthur, and she thinks he must understand, but even his last note is a fortnight old, now; the parchment curled up on her bedside table, the ink beginning to fade.

At least she is calm, now; it is better than the feral, terrified fear that ripped through her when Bill Weasley told them the news. _He fought his way out_, Bill had said, scarred face white and tense in the firelight, and Remus had touched his fingers to her wrist and told her in a whisper not to worry, that he can look after himself, and that he'll be back, in no time at all. She had listened, a mutinous, malignant doubt clawing around inside her like a small animal, and clutched her teacup tight in her hands to keep them from trembling.

It feels like grief, like a loss, and this is foolish, because he did not belong to her. She had insisted it remain undefined, the thing that hovered between them; and she wonders at times if perhaps her heart knew not to bother giving it a name, suspected that it would be gone too soon to be worthy of words. She insisted, told both him and herself that it was trivial; a thing of comfort, an amusement, and she could see it hurt him to hear such words. She listed the reasons, and there were so many; she presented the evidence against it, against _them_, in a rational, academic way, and her argument was so persuasive that toward the end he stopped talking back, instead sitting still and silent as marble, watching her with an indecipherable expression upon his face. She has not seen him, not heard his voice or touched his hand, in months, now, and it feels like bereavement, even though it shouldn't.

She sits beneath her window, shawl tucked tight around her shoulders, wand held limply in her fingers as she whispers. Names, places, things; words which used to mean so much, now just little strings of syllables, and she runs through them in the same order, every evening, as the wireless hums its unchanging, static song. It is only after the very last word on her list, the name barely escaping her as another caress of grief brushes up against her, that a young, terribly familiar voice suddenly fills the room.

"Meanwhile, in Gaddley..."

Lee Jordan, and she can picture his joking face so clearly in her mind that tears of relief spring suddenly to her eyes, and she listens, raptly. More deaths, Muggles and wizard alike, Bathilda, goblins; all gone, all obliterated from existence, and she sits in silence, as instructed, no longer bothering with the handkerchief clutched in her fist. At first she thinks she must be dreaming, when the Jordan boy says the name.

Royal. The foolishly simple code name that never failed to infuriate her with the danger it posed - it was always more of a nickname, really - and then, his voice. Every nerve in her body stretches taut, and her eyes close of their own accord.

He sounds so calm; speaking words so carefully considered, in a tone so measured and so perfect for politics, she would always tease. She listens, as he preaches protection of the Muggles, and breath eludes her, as it always does when he is eloquent and impassioned.

"Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving."

It's a line she's heard from his lips a thousand times; a sound-bite so familiar she expects he may have appropriated it from Albus, but it rings like the purest truth in her ears, the resonant tone of his beautiful, undoing voice travelling through her very skin to soothe every wounded place within her. When the Jordan boy makes the joke about running for Minister, she laughs, for the first time in seven months.

The rest of the programme barely holds her attention, as her mind races away with itself; fantasy and hope twining together in stunning, rapturous images of him standing before her, his skin beneath her palm, his smile curving against her lips. Her heart races like a horse in her chest, her skin suddenly warmer than it has been all winter, as if it is rejoicing at the mere prospect of closeness to his. He is safe, thank the heavens and the gods and the fates, and when the silver shimmer of his Patronus soars through her open window, she weeps with gratitude.


End file.
